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Environment Vital for 'Go-west'
Improvement of the ecological environment should top the agenda of tasks to be done in the endeavor to improve the overall investment environment of the western regions, according to participants of the ongoing 2001 Western Forum of China.
``If we say water resources, road construction, electricity and gas are the basic conditions for western regions' economic development, improvement of the ecological environment is the necessary base upon which these economic goals must be built.'' said Shaanxi Governor Cheng Andong Wednesday in his speech.
``Therefore, we hope more people will join us to build a better home for people in the west as well as in the nation as a whole,'' said Cheng.
The western regions, which accounts for 60 per cent of China's total land area, is facing a deteriorating ecological environment. Soil and water erosion and desertification have become serious threats to people's livelihood and a bottleneck to economic development.
Eighty per cent of China's 3.6 million-square-kilometer area affected by water and soil erosion and 90 per cent of the nation's 2.6 million-square-kilometer decertified areas are in the western regions.
Human beings' unlimited exploitation of resources, such as unrestricted farming, overgrazing and deforestation, has been the main reason for the ecological degradation.
The nation has listed the betterment of the ecological system as one of the major tasks in its western development strategy, in addition to infrastructure construction and the attraction of investment capital.
Some key projects are being implemented with financial assistance from the central government, such as the return of farmland to forest and reafforestation and water control projects in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions.
Preferential taxation policies have been given to investors involved in the ecological protection field and subsidies are offered to encourage projects returning farmland to nature and promoting reafforestation.
As of July 2001, the western regions had completed 1.64 million hectares of afforestation and 960,000 hectares of defarming and reafforestation area, according to Wang Chunzheng, vice-director of the Western Region Development Office under the State Council.
``The nation will input 96 billion yuan (US$11.5 billion) in the preservation of natural forests from 2000 to 2010, most of which is directed at the western regions,'' said Zhang Youcai, vice-minister of finance.
Shaanxi is the nation's trial area for tackling water and soil erosion and desertification. Progress have been achieved in Yan'an and Yulin regions in the northern part of the province.
``As the main battlefield in rebuilding the western regions' ecological system, Shaanxi will exert more efforts to make our mountains greener and water cleaner to create a more satisfactory environment for investors,'' Chengg pledged.
Source: China Daily
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